30th January
by amyniknak
Summary: An old Muggle woman watches a man in a long black coat every year, walking to the same spot in the children's playground, where he stays for the day, never looking around him. Who is he? And why does he come? Oneshot. Severus Snape centric.


A/N - Yay for another random Snape oneshot? I seem to be getting some kind of Snape mania recently (Kushy, shut up laughing) and yeah, the ideas keep coming. This one came in the middle of a General Studies exam, and I ended up writing it properly while I should have been revising for Psychology. Ah well. Snape's worth it. (shutupkushy)

This is kind of strange by the way. I don't like it that much, but it's different to most of the things I've written before so I thought I'd post it. Plus, reviews make me happy, haha.

Anyway, here you go. Oh, and if you get the significance of the date, in fact, the significance of it all, you are awesome.

Sorry it's weird.

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**30th January**

Betty Peters hated the 30th January.

That was the day he came, ever year without fail. The man in the long black coat, who never once looked around him, but always strode over to the same spot in the children's playground opposite her house, sat in the middle of the bushes opposite the swings, and stayed there until the darkness began to settle.

No-one seemed to know who he was. Until last year, she had been the only one to have ever seen him. "Your tall, dark and handsome stranger?" her friends from down the street had joked. "Come to sweep you off your feet, no doubt. Your John had better watch out!" She had always protested, and insisted that he was in fact real, and that while he may have been fairly tall, with black hair, he was not what she would have called handsome, by any account.

Haunted was more like it, she had noted the first time he had come. That had been back in 1982, the year where it had seemed to snow continually. Her husband had had to sweep the drive before he went off to work at the factory, and she had been seeing him off down the road from out of the kitchen window when she had seen _him_. The boy with no name.

His hands had been thrust deep in the pockets of his ridiculous coat (or was it a robe? It was all very strange.), his face set. He couldn't have been over 25, but his face…. He'd glanced up at the window, only for a second, and something about his expression had made her gasp out loud. Something about him… his expression…. So much loss and despair, twisted into a mask he was surely forced to wear against his will.

Yet she never saw him cry. Not once, in the many years he made his annual pilgrimage to the playground. She had witnessed every one of his vigils, and not one tear had been shed. He simply always cleared himself a place to sit, snapping twigs and sometimes brushing away patches of snow, and he lowered himself down, with the posture of a much older man, and stayed. He never seemed to move. It was a complete mystery why he was there.

Even when his solitude was broken by others in the playground, he never reacted. Even when a mother with five assorted children had entered the playground, laid eyes on the strange man with the tunnel-like eyes, and warned her children not to go near that "funny bloke there", he had not moved an inch. He simply stared, at a fixed point on the swings, as if a ghost that only he could see was occupying them.

Betty didn't like to pry, but sometimes she desperately felt as if she should intervene. She wasn't spying as such… although she only ever left the window when he did; she was…. Looking out for him. He wasn't much older than her own son, yet he seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

It was clear he had been through what no normal person would in a lifetime, but she could never deduce what. Why that particular place was so special… why she only ever saw him on that certain day…

In seventeen years, she never gained any more knowledge about the sad boy, who grew into the sad man, than she had had the first time she laid eyes on him. It was all simply speculation. There had been so many times when she wanted to ask him outright; invite him in for a cup of tea, or bring one out to him.

But then again, there was always a tiny part of her that didn't believe in his existence. He seemed at times like a perfectly solid ghost, existing, but not living. It was only in 1997 that her friend Agnes had confirmed that he was in fact real, and also suggested a possible identity.

"He looks a right lot like old Snape," she had said. "Yes, you know, the old guy who used to live down in Spinner's End. Same nose and hair, if you look. Son perhaps? But you're right love, he doesn't look well at all."

Then Agnes had tried to pull Betty away from the window, but something had made her resist. She had to keep watching it, compelled somehow, although she was almost certain that nothing different was going to happen in her absence.

She knew it was wrong to get involved, but she sometimes felt as if she knew him, cared for him more than anyone else. She wondered if he had family, or friends, a wife? But then of course, he didn't look the type. He didn't seem to take care of himself at all. His hair was always overlong and needed a good trimming, his face pale, and he always seemed slightly underfed, particularly towards the end.

The end.

Ever since she had worked out that he always arrived on the thirtieth of January, she had found herself marking the date on the calendar, sometimes even before family birthdays. That was when he always appeared, no deviation. It wasn't a special day as such, not really, but she just felt as if she needed to mark the date, to know when it would arrive.

On the thirtieth of January 1999, he hadn't come at all.

It had been an unusually sunny day, but then every day had been for the past few months. No more of that horrible cloudy weather it seemed, and any rain seemed to fall only at night.

She'd waited for him all day, awaking at seven, and waiting until the sun began to set, at around four. There had been no sign of him, nothing. No sweep of black coat (or was it a robe?), no heavy footsteps on the pavement, no nothing. He wasn't coming, that she was sure of.

But yet, there had been something. Nothing of him, and it could have been a trick of the light, but she could have sworn that the sun had shone directly on the spot, his spot, basking it in a strange light.

Betty had run out to meet it, for reasons she could never fathom, as fast as her old slippers would allow her. She had unlatched the gate to the playground, scuffing her feet on the gravel, ducked under the slide and reached the bushes, the bushes he had obviously considered so special. Everything felt strangely warm, warmer than anywhere else in the playground, the emerald green leaves of the budding bushes winking in the sunlight.

That was when she had felt herself dissolve into tears, just for a few seconds. She never knew why. She wasn't in mourning, because he couldn't have died, surely, and it couldn't have been loss, because she had never even spoken to him.

Sometimes she thought it had perhaps been the aching sadness he had clearly felt, manifesting itself inside her for only a few moments, before dispersing and leaving, forever.

She had never even known his name.

She never tried to find him. There wouldn't have been any point.

Somehow she knew that wherever he was, he was at peace somehow, and that had to be enough.

But somehow, every January the thirtieth, she found herself glancing towards the playground, the place he had held so dear, though she never knew why.

A/N - Again, sorry it's weird. Don't flame me, please? Haha.


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